Traders say glut in TN led to price crash; farmers blame traders for market manipulations
KAKINADA: The prices of coconuts have crashed by more than 50 per cent during the past fortnight, causing great distress to farmers in the BR Ambedkar Konaseema district in particular.
The bumper crop in Tamil Nadu is responsible for the slump in demand and crash in prices. To make matters worse, the festive season also ended, when coconuts were in high demand. Likely, there may not be any hike in coconut prices till the Sankranti season. Till then, farmers are likely to face odds.
According to Konnaseema’s coconut traders, coconut price declined to Rs 14 per fruit from Rs 26 and copra prices crashed to Rs 27 from Rs 31. Till 15 days ago, coconut load departures were of 100 trucks (each truck carrying 20 tonnes) per day, which has now fallen to 20 trucks. Coconuts exports are carried to Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and other states from Konaseema district.
Traders association leader Apppana KaliPrasad said the demand has decreased due to the heavy cold in the northern states. The excess from Tamil Nadu market added to the slump in prices in the Konaseema market.
He said Tamil Nadu has big coconut farms. The farmers there are using advanced technology to increase the yield. In Konaseema,
the farmers are still using manual methods to extract coconut from trees. Quality, thus, suffered.
Coconut has high demand during the rakhi, holy, Sriramanavami, dasara and some of other festivals in the north and Telangana, and during the Vinakaya Chaturthi time in Maharashtra. In Tamil Nadu, coconut is grown in 16 districts.
BKS leader T Gopalakrishna said the excess supply of coconuts in the Tamil Nadu market was just a pretext. Rather, coconut traders in Konaseema area have formed a syndicate and they jointly brought down coconut prices to make huge profits. The supply has seen only a mild increase in Tamil Nadu, but the Konaseema traders are making a mountain out of a molehill, he said.
